


these are the times that try men's souls

by zhennie



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, Lost Bucky Barnes, Post-Movie(s), Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 20:19:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1562723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zhennie/pseuds/zhennie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."<br/>-Thomas Paine</p><p>This is the redemption of Bucky Barnes. It doesn't happen all at once, but it does happen, slowly, like learning to walk again or remembering the words to a song. It's sand and grit, good days and bad, and the continual pounding of a name against his heart, driving him forwards. He's not a ghost, and he's not a soldier, either. But maybe, just maybe, he can learn to be a hero.</p>
            </blockquote>





	these are the times that try men's souls

Some days, he doesn’t remember anything.

It’s just all bits and pieces—a smile, the feeling of two bodies, bumping into each other for a few fleeting seconds, a mottled shade of purple and black, like a bruise. But he can’t fit them together, not quite yet. That part is still out of his reach, shut off through programming and conditioning and pain, a live wire running through his body.

Since he left, though, since he walked out of the darkness, neat and orderly, and into the light, with its openness and uncertainty, meandering from place to place, wherever his broken body bids, the pieces have come more and more often, like tearing down a wall or peeling off a strip of wallpaper. The first step is always the hardest, but the rest crumbles in his wake. 

Those days, he remembers too much, metal and fire and the sound of an orchestra, a slim hand in his, a laugh, the constant nagging feeling in the back of his brain as he turns to find Steve, only to see that he’s—

He doesn’t go out, those days. He hides himself, wherever he can, it’s what he’s best at, and he screams through the pain, the flood of memories, good and bad, the barriers breaking down and shattering him, and then putting him back together again. The more he remembers, the more he wonders—is it really worth putting himself together again? 

He doesn’t think of himself as Bucky, but he doesn’t think of himself as not Bucky, either. He checks into a hotel one day, and they ask him what his name is. 

“James,” he replies, after a moment of hesitation, after pausing to climb over the obstacle in his path that tells him _not to say a word_ , “James…Rogers.” 

They’re like brothers. Even if he doesn’t remember everything, he remembers that, fondness and exasperation and a deep, ingrained sense of _love_ , and the moment things had started to crack before they had broken, falling, falling, falling, a wordless yell caught in his throat for some reason he couldn’t understand yet.

He remembers his own fall, later. 

The name—James—sticks, and he takes to introducing himself as James Rogers, more and more, until it flows off his tongue easily. He is more James than Bucky, and more Bucky than ghost. James takes to travelling around, first around DC, Virginia, Maryland, and sometimes even Delaware, doing whatever work he can find, manual labor and construction work and everything in between. It’s all he’s good for, now, all his broken body and his broken mind are good for that isn’t killing. 

And yet. 

The first time, it’s an accident. He’s in a bar, nursing a warm beer and trying to stave off a headache—it had been a bad day, peppered with the echoing sounds of Steve’s coughs, loud and racking, like his soul had been trying to escape through his mouth—when there’s a crash, through the door, and his head whips up, training kicking in before instinct, assessing, intruders, guns, demands for everyone to sit down and shut up, this is a hostage situation—he isn’t Bucky and he isn’t James, and he sure as hell isn’t a ghost anymore, but still, he clenches his metal fist and draws back his arm, coolly disarms the thugs, lets his body go through the motions, doesn’t think, because he’s not programmed to think—

He comes back to himself as the sound of sirens grows closer, and he panics, just a little, jumps over the bar and ducks out the back, pulling down his cap and tugging the hood of his jacket up just a little more, slips behind the growing crowd into the darkness once more, lines and order in chaos, comforting. 

He ends up on the news anyway, but they call him a hero. ‘ _Mysterious Man Rescues Bar from Gangsters_ ’, the banner across the local news program says, with a shot of the bar and fuzzy security camera footage of his hat. It’s unsettling, and he frowns, leaves town the next day even as they’re trying to weed him out—to thank him, rather than capture him, and isn’t that a terrifying idea in its own right?

But then—it happens again, except he just happens to be passing by a burning building with a mother on the sidewalk screaming about her children, like some sort of dumb joke the universe is playing on him, as if he isn’t already messed up enough. He doesn’t think—just pushes past all the people and into the building, maneuvering his way through the building like it’s some sort of test and grabbing the two children by the waist, emerging from the building with a child under each arm. In the ensuing chaos and the grateful sobs of the mother, he slips away again, nervous. 

“ _You’re such a dumbass,_ ” a voice says in his head, a voice that faintly sounds like himself but not himself, the Bucky-himself with the easy smile and the easy laugh and the easy words. Yes, he agrees, though, he is a dumbass, and he should stop getting involved in the business of people who are not him. 

Then it happens a third time, and a fourth, and more and more and more, and each time he makes a quick exit from town before he can be caught or recognized, but he’s long since stopped trying to stop himself. It’s become a routine of its own, in a way, like, but better than the order in the darkness. 

He bounces a lot, now, only a few weeks here and there, if that, and because of this, he ends up in New York City, has to pause at the corner of a street and blink away the similarities, remind himself of who he is again and what he has done. And then he’s in Central Park, standing on a rock and looking down an empty trail and thinking that it’s strange because it’s unfamiliar, and not because he’s forgotten about it, and—

“Bucky.” 

His head whips around fast, his shoulders tense, fists clench, he isn’t Bucky Barnes, he is James Rogers, if he has to be anyone, he’s never told anyone about Bucky, nobody knows, nobody will know, the only person who knows is—Steve.

And he’s standing there, on the trail below Bucky, his ridiculous chest heaving, sweat and fabric plastered against his skin, a look something between confusion and hope on his face, and what are the odds that he runs into Steve here, in New York City, with its millions of people and millions of places?

 _Steve_ , Bucky-himself breathes, pulling up a thousand different memories of that same hangdog expression on Steve’s face, the instant willingness to do absolutely anything for this man. _Rogers_ , ghost-himself hisses, residual instinct and the memory of his first and last unfinished mission. He ignores that voice, though, has gotten used to picking through his mind and isolating it, plucking out the bits of darkness as he finds them, though there are still a thousand more bits wedged in him. 

But he is not Bucky and he is not a ghost, and James is bound by neither. 

“Bucky,” Steve says again, the furrow between his brows creasing even more, and he realizes he hasn’t said a word. He turns, to look at Steve, and thinks, quite faintly, that he’s changed too. His hair is different, shorter, more modern. His face is more guarded, hardened and sharpened by experience and disappointment—he knows what that looks like, he wonders what his own face looks like now. He thinks, briefly, that the two of them are the same, just falling in opposite directions, a winter soldier and a patriot in a thunderstorm. 

“Steve,” he says, quiet, and Steve smiles—hesitant but bright, just the way he remembers Steve’s smiles to be. Hopeful.

Steve takes him back to his apartment in Brooklyn, a moderately-sized, worn-in place, muted colors and soft lines, like a blanket or a particularly nice memory he thinks of sometimes, a blonde woman—Sarah Rogers, a voice in his head whispers—smoothing down both their hair. 

“What’re you doing in New York, Buck?” Steve asks, hovering in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. Steve’s already run back and forth between the two a couple of times, offering water and sandwiches and even beer. He took the water, but not the sandwich or the beer, but he doesn’t know whether to sit or stand, to get ready to run or make himself comfortable, because he knows what Bucky would do and what the ghost would do, but he doesn’t know what James who he sometimes is now would do, so he compromises, props himself on the arm of the sofa, one hand with a glass of water in it and the other resting on the sofa. 

“Nothing, really,” he replies, “passing through. Looking for a job and a place to stay for a while, I guess.” 

“You can stay with me, if you want,” Steve offers, automatically, “There’s an extra room, it’s kind of small and I’ve been using it as an art studio but we could put a bed in there, it’s no trouble, I can sleep on the couch in the meantime and you can have my bed—”

“Rogers,” he cuts him off, and Steve stops, mid-sentence, and his jaw snaps shut audibly before he looks away. 

“Sorry,” Steve says, “didn’t mean to get carried away. But honestly, though, you’re welcome to live with me. The offer stands.” He makes a noncommittal grunt in response to Steve, neither promising nor rejecting, and looks away. 

It’s awkward, for the next thirty minutes or so of his visit, small talk peppered by hesitant questions, the kind of conversation held by two people who knew each other once, but don’t, anymore. Eventually, though, even Steve’s good hospitality stops fueling his mouth, even as he keeps stealing glances, hope in his eyes. James stands, although Bucky-himself tells him to stay, that Steve had offered and Steve needs someone to take care of him, even now, and says that he’s going. Steve’s brow furrows again, but he nods, before making a noise, and disappearing to the kitchen once more, coming back with a scrap of sketchbook paper, folded once. Ten digits—a telephone number.

“That’s my cell phone number,” Steve says, “if you ever need to reach me, for whatever reason—please, call me.” 

He doesn’t say anything in response to that, but he does tuck the piece of paper into his jacket. 

As it turns out, he doesn’t need the piece of paper, because he comes back to Steve’s the next day, and just—doesn’t leave, except to answer the calls of places he had applied to for jobs. Steve disappears during the day too, but that is to be expected. Steve isn’t broken like he is, Steve is meant for better things and shouldn’t be hidden away in the darkness. There has always been a contrast between the two of them, even before, even after, the two of them are like spring and winter, life and death. 

He can see the happiness on Steve’s face, in the way he sometimes tentatively starts a story from the past, and when he—James him—can finish the story, pull up the memory in his head. Steve’s smile will flash, hard and sharp, but in a way like the sun, blinding in its warmth and goodness. And he—he is happy too, perhaps, happier than he has ever dared to be, than he’s ever remembered being except when he was with Steve, even back then, just the two of them in an apartment together, or side by side on the battlefield. 

He figures out, through a few casual comments and the answering machine messages people leave for Steve, sometimes, that Steve is giving up something for him, is holding him back in case Bucky needs him. Steve never comes right out and says it, because he is a good man, but James doesn’t feel like he’s worth it, because he’s still in three pieces, James, Bucky, a ghost, held together by crumbling plaster. 

And he says just as much to Steve, _I’m not worth it_. Steve looks so angry, then, his face turns red and his face hardens and his jaw clenches.

“Don’t you dare tell me that,” he says, “don’t you dare. You are worth everything.” 

James looks away first, the sheer echoing conviction in Steve’s voice echoing in his head. It echoes as they eat dinner together, silent, as he makes an excuse to Steve and leaves the apartment, weaving through the streets of Brooklyn, hands shoved into his pockets. He’s a ninety-something-year-old man with nothing but a couple of broken memories and a blood dripping from his hands. He’s no good for anything but manual labor and going where people tell him to go. Steve’s deluding himself. James Rogers, Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier—whoever he is, whoever he’s been, he’s not worth anything at all. 

He shoves his hands deeper into his pockets, turns around at the end of the street, traces a path back to Steve’s apartment. And then he pauses, sensing someone—something—nearby, something about to happen. He clenches his fist, looks around, tenses up—but nothing happens. Time continues, the street keeps moving, calm and ordinary. He loosens the clench in his fist, starts walking again. Paranoia, he thinks, just another reason why he’s not—

Steve’s apartment building explodes. 

He’s running before he realizes it, towards the apartment building, just like he’s done a hundred times without thinking in a hundred different cities and towns, except this time it’s Steve, who he shouldn’t be worth anything to, but is worth everything to him. It starts to crumble, the bottom right corner, a sagging building like a soggy paper bag, but he slips in anyways, runs up the stairs while they’re still secure, all the way up to Steve’s fourth-floor apartment, where Steve is—helping people out, of course he is. 

“Steve!” he yells, and Steve looks up, jerks his head behind him. He goes, wordlessly, of course, because Steve is the Captain and of course he’ll follow the Captain, but most importantly, he’ll follow that kid from Brooklyn who wouldn’t give up on him. So he runs where Steve gestures, finds a couple of kids and their mother, herds them out the building as quickly as he can. And James hands off the kids to a pair of paramedics, not bothering to cover his head this time like he has all the other times, searching, instead, for Steve. And there are the people he was helping, but Steve himself is nowhere to be found.

One of the paramedics comes into his view, reaches for him, and James steps back, an automatic instinct. 

“Where’s Steve?” he asks, ducking.

“Bucky,” Steve’s voice comes from behind him, and James whirls around, and Steve’s hands come up, palms in front, his eyebrows fly up, surprised, and everything is alright, nothing but paranoia and Steve, and James sags, one sharp exhale, head tilting back so all he can see is the sky. And then he looks at Steve, just once more, and Steve smiles, wholeheartedly trusting him like he’s never stopped. 

It occurs to him, later, that Steve never had. 

And his face shows up on the news after that, like it hadn’t in any of the million other towns he had played hero in, ‘CAPTAIN AMERICA AND COMPANION SAVE APARTMENT RESIDENTS’, and there is his face, plastered all over the television and the newspapers, a little haggard and a little guarded, next to Steve’s, a grin plastered across his face, his eyes soft. And it’s strange, because they look right, standing there, not like Captain America and a ghost with blood on his hands, but like two ordinary men who have just tried to save the day, as best they could. 

He doesn’t know how to feel about it. He doesn’t feel like Bucky, but he doesn’t feel like the Winter Soldier, either. He feels like James, a little of both and a little of neither. He feels like James, with a shitshow of a backstory and two conflicting voices in his head, who lives with Captain America and sometimes has bad dreams, who does what he can and feels like it’s never enough. 

“You’re worth everything,” Steve says—and he doesn’t really feel like he deserves that trust, not just yet. 

But he doesn’t feel like he doesn’t, either, now.


End file.
